Swakopmund Feels on the Outside Like a Nazi Outpost

I slept so well last night.  I am staying at the Meike Guest House, a lovely outpost of civilization in the heart of Swakopmund, Namibia's German outpost.  The town has a large number of old German buildings and about 10,000 German inhabitants and an untold number of German tourists staying in places like The Hansa Hotel or The Deutsches Haus.  I had dinner last night at Erich's Restaurant, which has a German menu and was filled with German pensioners.

But the history of Swakopmund is by no means as lovely as the way it looks on the outside.  Germans have lived here since the 1870's and they erected a real German outpost that was racially segregated and took advantage of the cheap labor the local population provided them.  The guest house owner himself is a German immigrant here since 1986, coming in the Apartheid era.  You have to question the philosophy of a man who moves here from Germany during Apartheid to buy 1200 hectares of farmland and settle here with his family.  I asked this question and the answer is not straightforward.  They came here, like many foreigners do, to make a difference.  His wife first came to South Africa with a Christian mission, and when they arrived in 1986 they started with farming.  They felt sorry for the poor people they employed on their farm and gave them clothing.  But they discovered that the workers would never wear the clothing they were given.  Rather, it would be sold for food, given to relatives, etc.  Africa on the inside, in the daily life, is never as it appears on the outside.

I spoke to him at length this morning about his experience and he is quite embittered that he has had to sell his farm and move into the city, where his wife now runs this lovely guest house.  They employ a staff of 7 black africans who he complains are uneducated and don't want to learn how to do simple things.  He told me the story of one of his maids who for seven years will only empty the dishwasher.  He fills it, but she doesn't want to learn that skill.  He told me much of the country is like that, and I've heard this racist chant from South Africans who call blacks "Kaffers" and insist they are all lazy thieves too.

He further complains about the corrupt National government and feels the blacks are taking the international aid and using it to amass personal wealth rather than educate the population.  But this is again a common complaint from the white classes in Southern Africa who have been politically and economically displaced by history.

But I frankly have no sympathy for the whites who lived here during Apartheid as they had 100 years to educate the local population to be self-sufficient and they chose instead to keep them ignorant as a policy tool to maintain power.  But it does appear they have tried hard to make a difference.  They provide pension benefits to the staff they have employed (two for over 12 years), give them 24 days of holiday and 12 sick days a year.  Staff have their own room to do laundry, make meals, wash up, and are treated like family. 

The owners told me that many German tourists come here and only complain about their jobs and their lives in Germany never getting out of themselves to appreciate what is different, unique, and beautiful about Africa.

The city is full of old German street names and German styled architecture.  The Kaiser Wilhelm Strasse is the main street, there are German primary schools, an equestrian club, a soccer field (in the desert), and a central administration building with a monument to the 1904-5 campaign the Germans waged against the local population in the world's first planned Genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples led by Herman Goering's Father. It was here where the Germans created their first concentration camp on Shark Island, and some of the German commanders who oversaw the war against the local population brought the same ideas to Munich in the 1920's when the Nazi Party was first formed.

I am surprised the Namibian Government has not torn down this offensive monument.  To me it is as odious as statues of Stalin, Hitler, and Sadaam Hussein and it deserves to be destroyed.  When I asked the owners about this monument, they told me they prefer to keep it standing as it is a reminder of war, of the darkness of human beings.  If we tear it down, they said, it is too easy to forget this lesson and repeat it.

In Namibia, interestingly, all tribes have their locations.  Germans live in Swakopmund, the Brittish in Walvis Bay, and the Afrikaners in Henties Bay.  The distances are so vast and the populations so small, each has worked hard to insulate themselves and protect their cultures.  This means that Germans here in Swak speak a perfect German that you can only find in Germany.  They are modern Germans.  They are pacifists and they do not identify with the past wars against the indigenous people or the horrors of WWII.  OK, there may be some fringe lunatics who identify with the Nazi party but everyone has these people in their societies. 

Throughout the rest of the city one can see the stark disparities between the white life of leisure and the black life of struggle.  Here are photos of the local sports club, with the soccer green and riding areas.  These disparities exist but the solutions are by no means easy.  Many foreigners come to Africa with the idea that they have the solution and can make things better.  They come and give away clothing and food and rarely take the time to understand how things have become how they are here and how to improve society from within rather than from without.  In the end, many of these well intentioned immigrants become disillusioned. 

Like any aggregation of human beings with diverse cultures, Namibia is a complex country with a history and set of traditions and behaviours that must be first understood.  We in the West can't walk in here and think we understand the place after just strolling around the streets and observing a few monuments.

 Below is a photo of graffiti from a camping ground and some photos of some black people I met this morning going through the garbage cans outside the German hotels.

 This is a former german, whites only, hospital.

 And a german primary school which is no longer whites only.

By now, most of the businesses in town are owned by blacks, but the vast majority of blacks here live in a Township on the edge of Swakopmund and there is almost no racial mixing.  And they enjoy where they live.  They think we whites who live in our big homes are lonely and sad.  They live surrounded by family and friends and are really happy in their lives.  They don't measure their worth based on how many electronic gadgets they own, how large their home is, or what profession they have chosen.  Walk the streets of a Township and you see hundreds of smiling children playing in the dirt streets.  Walk the streets of white suburban areas and those streets are quiet because the children are inside playing Xbox, or staring at their smartphones.

Coming to Africa reminds me time and again how different things really are from how they appear on the outside and how we wish to perceive them.

This is a quaint German outpost in Africa that is far more African than German and it takes a lot of conversation and investigation to appreciate how people really live.  One has to remove one's tendency to judge first and ask questions later, if at all.